Category: The Sociological Review

Welcome to another *live* episode of Surviving Society! In our third and final collaboration with The Sociological Review, our #1 fan Dr Michaela Benson interviews Saskia, Chantelle and Tissot about podcasting, public sociology, and how we’ve helped each other to survive our PhDs. With our lovely audience of fellow PhD students and early career researchers, we discuss why we see sociology as an activist discipline, and the importance of harnessing your rage when you’re doing social research. Thank you so much to everyone in the audience for coming along and being so engaged, and an extra big thank you to Michaela for all her help and support! As always, we’re angry, we’re sweary, we’re laughing, and we’re super grateful to everyone who has made this panel, the podcast and our studies possible.

What do people mean when they talk about the ‘smart city’, and can the smart city ever be inclusive? In our second episode recorded in collaboration with The Sociological Review, Chantelle, Tissot and Saskia talk to Dr Ayona Datta about her work on urban transformations in Indian cities. Ayona argues that we need to be skeptical about whether smart cities can really address deep-rooted inequalities – smart water meters are useless if there’s no infrastructure for clean running water. Tissot tells us about the creative uses of smart technology by homeless people living in London’s financial district, showing that, although digital divides run across class lines, smart technology can change our cities in unplanned and exciting ways.

In the first of our collaborations with The Sociological Review, Professor Satnam Virdee talks to Tissot, Chantelle and Saskia about the importance of ‘race’ when it comes to understanding class and capitalism. Satnam argues that, looking at the last three centuries of capitalism in Britain and its empire, we can see that ‘‘race’ and nation, when it comes to thinking about Britain, run hand in hand’. As informative about the current political moment as he is about histories of capitalism, we especially love Satnam’s challenge to the idea that Britain was ever a ‘white’ nation, and the hope he offers about the role migrants can and have played in the democratisation of our society.